


Best-Laid Plans

by stemitt



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2655701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stemitt/pseuds/stemitt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serein: n. Fine rain falling from an apparently cloudless sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best-Laid Plans

**Author's Note:**

> (April 12. Aka the day before John starts playing)

It is time. Everything has condensed, swirled together into a single point, ready to burst forth in all its chaotic glory at the drop of a hat — and for all she knows, maybe a hat does get dropped — but it's okay, she has prepared for this. All that she's done so far in this life, she's done so in the hope that these four children just might save the universe, and maybe another one or two along the way. It is time, and tomorrow is a birthday, a day of life and death and everything in between, and by its end children will have become gods, guardians will have become dust, aliens friends and dogs enemies.

She feels the tension strumming through the air, high and vibrating as a violin with the bow just barely brushing the rightmost string and the other hand all the way down off the fingerboard and nearly onto the bridge itself. The comparison comes easily as she thinks back to lessons, to things learned by osmosis. She nearly hears the high, keening impatience as the universe and the world as she knows it prepares to cease existing, and she recognizes the way it is for some the hammering of a universal heart, or the background hiss and beat of a rhythm long overdue for variation, or the low, nearly subterranean hum of an electric bass gathering energy for a different chord; but she also knows that it will never not be violins, not with who she has as her daughter (her dear, sweet daughter, her reason for living in more ways than one, her pride and joy and everything she could have hoped for, and she hopes that perhaps someday . . . well. For now, that perhaps that someday will come).

She leaves to lean over the porch railing outside. It is too late to be afternoon, too early to be evening, and she dangles her martini glass between two fingers as she looks out over the fading but definite light. The tension is no different here, but she tells herself it feels less claustrophobic than from inside the house.

A toast, then. To endings. To children. To those who are, and those who once were (and who will never be again). To forever-unrealized potential, and to inexplicable feelings of loss. She raises her glass to the universe at large, and lets it fall to the rocks below. Let the world drink, she thinks, may it partake for the last time before the end.

And she looks up, she looks out as she stands there, out on top of the world as everything finishes turning into night; the stars are out and so is the moon but there are no darkened patches against the sky to hint at the presence of clouds. She turns her face up to the light above her, not nearly enough to light the ground around her but just barely enough to be seen. She keeps her head tilted until it mists over from the rain inexplicably falling from the clear, clear sky, until she can pretend none of the moisture comes from her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted a while back on promptbound.tumblr.com - I used it to test out my writing skills but never got around to putting it online anywhere. Now, it's too embarrassing to post to my own blog (it's been too long, and I've never shared any writing on there) so I'm sticking it on this account which has no association with my personal blog.


End file.
